CONFLICT IN THE BALKANS

CONFLICT IN THE BALKANS; Serbs in Bosnia Allow Red Cross To Visit Camps

By CHUCK SUDETIC,

Published: August 9, 1992

BELGRADE, Yugoslavia, Aug. 8—
Serbian leaders from Bosnia and Herzegovina have given the International Committee of the Red Cross permission to inspect detention centers, Red Cross officials said today. But the permission comes days after most prisoners were transferred from two centers reported to be among the most brutal.

The Serbian officials agreed on Friday to allow the inspection of a detention center on the grounds of an iron-ore mine at Omarska. Muslim former prisoners have repeatedly charged that Serbian guards regularly beat inmates to death at Omarska, at the Keraterm ceramic-tile factory outside the town of Prijedor and at other detention sites.

Red Cross relief teams are scheduled to begin visiting detention centers near the northern Bosnian town of Banja Luka on Wednesday, a Red Cross spokesman told Reuters. Repeat visits will be permitted.

Serbian leaders closed Keraterm and clearly wound down operations and improved conditions at Omarska and other sites before opening them to foreign reporters this week. Detainees Reported Released

At least several hundred detainees were released from the Omarska camp and sent to a low-security transit camp in Trnopolje, former detainees and camp officials said.

On Thursday night, foreign reporters saw a column of white Prijedor city buses, escorted by police cars, moving from the direction of Omarska toward a prison camp at Manjaca, just northeast of Banja Luka, but no prisoners were visible through the windows.

When the reporters arrived at a checkpoint near a side road to Omarska, a police official said reporters would be shot at if they moved 100 yards farther down the road.

Witnesses in the area reportedly saw prisoners sitting on the floors of buses during at least one of the transfers.

The commander of Manjaca, Bozidar Popovic, said today that about 1,300 prisoners had been transferred to his camp from Omarska in recent days. Site for Initial Investigations

Officials said Omarska had been used for preliminary investigations of detainees suspected of having engaged in the armed conflict against Serbian forces. Men found to have taken up arms against Serbian forces were sent to the Manjaca camp and the others were sent to Trnopolje, the officials said.

The living conditions at Omarska on Friday appeared to be decent, but former prisoners described conditions in the center as far more harsh than those found by foreign reporters.

Several of the 175 inmates said to remain there appeared to be near starvation.

Allegations by the Bosnian Government and former prisoners that Serbian fighters killed thousands of people in camps shocked Western leaders. -------------------- SERB THREATENS TERROR ATTACKS

SARAJEVO, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Aug. 8 (AP) -- A Bosnian Serb official today threatened "kamikaze missions" by ethnic Serbs against targets in Western Europe in the event of military intervention in Bosnia.

Aleksa Buha, foreign minister of the so-called Serbian republic of Bosnia and Herzegovina, said at a news conference in Belgrade that ethnic Serbs outside Yugoslavia "have offered to participate in kamikaze missions against European targets in the event of Western aggression" against Serbs in Bosnia.

"They would be prepared to attack nuclear power plants throughout Europe," Mr. Buha said.

Photo: Muslims and Croatians in a barracks at a Serbian detention camp in Manjaca, southwest of Sarajevo. (Associated Press)